Today I write to commemorate
the little-known work of a woman,
a maker, an artist, a seer, and as life demanded, a marksman.
And a mother who lived, for a time, in a cabin in northern Alberta,
raising five children,
her husband, as required, drawn away flying bush plane.
And now you have the basic framework,
except to say it gets cold there, in deep winter,
the kind of cold that splits trees and makes flesh black in short minutes.
And in a cabin chinked with mud and straw and raw hope,
you need a good hot stove to last the dark hours.
But on this withering night,
cold came like a moon-white crystal vice,
pressed on the walls of rough timber,
gripped the cast-metal stove, crushed
ember to cinder.
And on this weathered dawn, came the fateful constellation,
the morning fire lit, the rime on the roof, thick and slick,
the wind-driven chimney cowl caught by frost,
the smoke forced back down, the cabin clouding in,
the children waking, coughing, and the woman,
seven months pregnant, alarmed,
pacing, now running
toward a rifle and a single bullet in a box,
the woman outside, sleepwear under parka,
felt-lined boots, bare head, bare hands, aiming,
steadying, sighting the chimney’s iced up cap —
this is a woman who writes poetry, who loves deeply,
her husband and her family, who befriends, who mentors,
who believes the scripture, believes hearts can change,
believes peace will come,
a woman long acquainted with the work of mindfulness,
of planting herself, and being open, at any moment, to conversion,
a woman who died peacefully, says her husband, full of age and readiness,
who found her hymn in bird song, who sang while gardening,
whose church was the cathedral of trees and sky,
robin nocturne, woodpecker staccato, pine speech,
swish of owl wing, hummingbird at delphinium, and wood ducks
in the dugout, and the openness of a wild rose to heal
the fragmentation of life, with its mishmash of this and that — *
this is a woman, who, full of adrenaline, breathed, prayed,
stood and occupied the telling moment as sparrows occupy willows,
who gently drew the hammer back, like she was thinning carrots,
squeezed the trigger, as though testing ripeness of wild strawberries,
saw the ice shatter,
the tin chimney swivel break free,
watched the smoke, surge in big round waves
above the birch and poplar and conifer,
watched the cabin clear itself,
called for her children,
and went about her day.
* Taken from Millie’s poem, In a Place Apart
Our lovely friend died serenely, December 11, 2021, in the presence of all her children and her husband, Ike.
